Decompression
by The Red Celt
Summary: After TNOTD, the Doctor needs some time to unwind and process everything that's happened. He's heartsick and weary, and so he turns to an old friend for help. (Note: this is my first foray ever into DW fanfiction, so if it sucks . . . well, just be gentle with me, okay?) 11th Doctor/OC with mentions of past companions and 11/River, rated M for future chapters.


He dropped Clara off at her house so she could spend some time with the children. It was a Tuesday. He'd always been sort of ambivalent about Tuesdays. Clara, of course, could tell that something was off about him when he didn't immediately send a parting jab her way, or sweep her around the control room and launch into a longwinded explanation of the origin of slugs in England, or whatever it was he was supposed to do in situations like this. In trying to act normal, he'd completely forgotten how to go about doing it and it wasn't until she called to him that he realized he was gripping the handlebars too tightly and had drifted off into the white noise that buzzed tunelessly in his brain.

"Huh? What?" he sputtered, shaking his head.

She laughed and said, "You went away for a moment there. Something on your mind?"

"Lots of things are on my mind, most notably my hair." He flipped some levers, pushed some buttons, and started flipping through the database for a place to go. Trouble was, he had no idea where he wanted to be. He started to go all morose again and knew he had to get Clara off the TARDIS before she started to pry. Nasty human habit, that. Prying. "Now, Angie and Artie miss you, I'm sure, and you need to go get some R&R before I come back and whisk you away again." He ushered her to the door and she smiled bemusedly, by now quite used to his hasty demeanor.

"You will come back, won't you?" she asked and he stopped, spun her around, and looked earnestly into her eyes.

"I always come back," he said, sounding more sure than he felt just then. "Don't I?"

"Yeah, it's just . . . are you all right? I mean, really all right?" Those eyes, brown and warm in her cherub's face, nearly undid him. He almost told her—wanted to tell her for a moment—but then he just smiled and kissed her forehead.

"'Course I am. Now don't worry about me, you go on and play hide and seek, make soufflés, buy . . . stuff . . . whatever it is you do when I'm not here." He was already bounding back up to the controls, making ready for his trip to . . . somewhere. Nowhere, maybe. He hadn't been there in a while. Lovely place, nowhere.

By the time he turned around, she'd gone. He stood, shoulders slumped, and took a deep breath before powering up the engines. This time, the familiar whirring just served to remind him that there wasn't anywhere he wanted to be. He needed to get away from everything, park the TARDIS and find someplace to decompress.

Seeing one's own grave . . . that sort of thing tended to stick with a person. Time lord. Whatever. He'd seen his own dead self, felt himself die a thousand times, then was saved a thousand times again, and River—

No. He wouldn't think about her. Not yet. It was still too fresh.

The TARDIS idled out in the darkness of space, orbiting some remote planet or other, as he mentally went through the vast catalog of places and times he'd been and discarded them all for one reason or other. Finally, when he'd all but exhausted his options, he tried to pin down what it was he needed to do. He wanted somewhere quiet, unlikely to be attacked or invaded any time soon, without many people around. More than anything, though, he wanted someone who would understand what he was going through. There were maybe six people in the universe's history who could do that, and four of them were either dead or beyond his reach.

And just like that, he had his answer.

He set the coordinates and tried to pinpoint the moment in time he thought would be best—Thursday, 176 years ago, in the Athos System. He hoped she'd stayed where he'd left her and hadn't moved off-planet. He was reasonably sure she wouldn't have done that without telling him first, though.

When he touched down and opened the doors onto the idyllic little piece of this planet, he was unable to enjoy the view for the first time in a very long time in his weariness. There were rolling green hills with foggy mountains in the distance encapsuling this wide valley in their heavily forested peaks. The little cabin with its stone-and-mortar walls, slate shingled roof, and fenced-in garden looked like it had grown from the root of the mountains, so well did it fit into the scenery. A thin tendril of smoke rose from the chimney. She was probably home, then.

As the Doctor stumbled to the cottage, he was indescribably tired. Not so tired that he wanted to sleep, no; this was an exhaustion of the soul. After all these long years and so many adventures, he had finally reached his limit.

The TARDIS engines weren't exactly quiet, so she had to have heard him arrive. Usually when visiting, he hardly had to do more than step outside before someone was barreling toward him in excitement (or hostility, depending on the situation—there seemed to be an even chance of both these days); she, however, made him knock. A small, mundane thing, to be sure, but it stuck with him for some reason.

The door opened to reveal a diminutive woman with long hair and bright, expressive eyes. She looked up at him with a wide smile and he was relieved to see that she hadn't changed at all. That was something one could depend on with long-lived people like her, they mostly stayed the same. Except time lords, but then no one was quite like them.

"Haelin," he said in greeting, and the deadened quality in his voice scared him. His face (new to her, but she knew him immediately just the same) must have given him away, because the smile dropped off her mouth so fast it seemed as though he should have heard it when it hit the floor and was replaced by concern and worry. She stepped aside to let him in and led the way into the kitchen, then gestured at a table and chair in the corner, where he gratefully sat.

He rubbed at his face and listened to her bustle around the kitchen, just as she used to do onboard the TARDIS during those early, lonely years. A warm mug of something fragrant was pressed into his hand and he drank it blindly, not caring that it burned his tongue on the way down. When he opened his eyes, she was sitting across from him with her own cup clasped in her tiny hands. She wasn't looking at him, though, just sitting companionably as though nothing was amiss. She knew him too well, he thought with a dry smile that felt more like a grimace.

Haelin was a former resident of Lutaea, a planet unlike any other. Most planets had that quality, though. It had been one of the most peaceful places in the universe, and one of the reasons for that was the inhabitants' ability to read each other's minds through touch. Knowing what someone is thinking, without any room for misinterpretation, went a long way toward quelling disputes before they began. They communicated solely through telepathy, and therefore had never developed voice boxes. It was a bit disconcerting 'speaking' with her at first, because he could feel her voice in his head as her touch transmitted her thoughts to him, but he'd soon gotten used to it.

She set her cup down and held her hand out to him with a raised eyebrow, inviting him to tell her why he'd come, and he sighed heavily. He started to reach out to her, but stopped halfway there as his fingers clenched into a fist. He shook his head, eyes shut, and she took her hand back. She smiled reassuringly, a promise that she wouldn't pry. He nodded and sipped at his tea, trying to take in some of the warmth.

Once he was finished, she took him down the hall and into one of the three doors in the back of the house. It was a bedroom, sparsely furnished with just a bed with a small chest at the foot and a lantern on the nightstand. He opened the chest and found it stocked with clothes in his size. When he turned around to confirm his suspicions, she blushed prettily and left him to his own devices with a shy smile.

Tired and heartsick, the Doctor sat on the edge of the surprisingly plush mattress and stared at his hands. He'd promised to come back and visit, and she'd trusted his word so much that she'd kept clothes on hand for him in case he dropped by. He didn't deserve such good friends. There were times when he questioned the judgment of his companions, and wondered why the hell they stayed so loyal to him even though he had to be the most fickle friend in existence. Take Amy, for instance (no matter how much it hurt to think of her)—she'd waited over a decade for him to return when he'd promised to take only a few minutes.

And in the end, as with nearly every one of his companions, he couldn't save her.

No matter what he did, he always let them down at some point, either by doing something or not doing something, or by not being who they needed him to be. It weighed on his heart, every single time he just. wasn't. enough.

He kicked off his shoes and stripped down to his undershirt and pants, slid under the covers, and lay down to stare at the wall. After a while, his eyelids began to close and he drifted off to sleep. It was a short-lived respite, though, before the nightmares began. They were always different, but held to the same theme of reliving all his past mistakes, or turning victories into crushing defeats. Live friends became dead ghosts. This time, it was Susan's voice as she pounded on the doors of the TARDIS, begging him not to leave her. His last tie to Gallifrey, and the only link to his family and his children, gone because he couldn't bear to see her go down the same path he'd taken.

He'd promised to go back someday, but he had a feeling it was too late for that now.

He sat up in the bed and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, lost in memories. It hadn't been long after leaving Susan that he'd made his way to Lutaea, limping along in a space ship that he was still trying to feel out, in response to a distress beacon he'd picked up about twelve light years away. They warned of a race of sentient machines that needed the minerals that were rich in their planet, and they had no way to fight them off. The Doctor had known it had to be the Daleks even before arriving, and his darkest suspicions were confirmed. An entire race of peaceful people who never wanted to hurt anyone, dead in minutes. Haelin had been much younger then, the sole survivor of the genocide.

He still remembered the way she just knelt on the floor of the control room, staring at the doors, as though she could will the past out of existence by concentrating hard enough. As if, by not moving, she could bring her people back. She'd stayed there for the better part of three hours, just staring, before finally getting up and disappearing deep into the depths of the ship.

After a few days she'd returned, stood silently beside him, and took his hand in hers. In the minutes or hours that followed, she shared her pain with him in a steady torrent of images and turmoil, some half-remembered and some so vivid they may as well have been happening right then. She soon found that he carried the same ache in his own hearts—he was the last of his kind, just as she was, and between the two of them grew a kindred bond that sprung from the pain of loss.

After the near-total eradication of her species, she'd had no home to return to, so she'd taken up residence on the TARDIS with him for a few years. The two of them went on a lot of adventures, saw a lot of places, but soon the time came when Haelin had decided she'd seen enough hardships for one lifetime and had asked to be dropped off somewhere nice. It had taken him months to find a suitable place (mostly because he was dragging his feet, not wanting to leave her behind), but he'd finally settled on this place—Kinnara, third planet in the Athos star system. She'd fallen in love with it immediately.

And now, after so long, he was back with her. It was good to see her again, although he wished it could have been under better circumstances. His life never seemed to go as planned, though—why should this time be any different?

He stood up and put his trousers back on, deciding to leave the button-down shirt behind, then headed into the darkened house. The night was brighter than most because of the triple moons, which cast thick bars of light on the floor and across the furniture. After much fumbling around in the shadows, he found the front door and went out into the cool night air. Haelin leaned over the railing, looking out at the moon-silvered hills stretching off into the distance. It had been so long since he'd stood still, and the quiet was at once relaxing and unnerving. Something would go wrong soon, he just knew it. That was the way it went around him.

When he came to stand next to her, she surprised him by threading her fingers in his, sharing her pacific mood. Her people, the Alldari, were by necessity a very tactile race, and it was then that he remembered their rules on clothing—the more exposed pressure points, the more willing that person was to share thoughts. He'd arrived at her house in his customary attire—tweed coat, long sleeves, buttoned to the neck. Very closed-off by Alldari standards, and she had respected that boundary by not touching him at all. Now, though, she took his short-sleeved shirt as an invitation to share and, while it was unexpected, it wasn't unwelcome. Quite the contrary, in fact. Her hand was warm in his, the perfect counterpoint to the slight chill in the air.

He felt her in his head and tried to relax around the odd sensation, allowing her limited access to surface thoughts. She made a chuffing sound, the best approximation of a laugh she could make without vocal chords, but he heard her giggling well enough through the bond. His thoughts were always running a mile a minute, and she was trying to keep up with the incessant data streaming through her mind. After a while, she just let go and let it wash over her, picking up little bits of interesting information as it came.

Her own thoughts were more abstract—curiosity about his sudden reappearance in her life, wondering if the dough in her proofing box would be ready for baking tomorrow morning, happiness at having him here again, and a pervasive reminder that she was there if he needed to talk about whatever was bothering him. She could just as easily have dug it out of his brain, but Haelin had more tact than that.

"Thank you. You know, for letting me stay," he said, completely unnecessarily as she could hear his thoughts well enough and couldn't understand his words anyway, but old habits died hard and he was a very gregarious man by nature. Besides, she'd told him before that she liked the timbre of his voice and listening to him go on and on was nice, even if all she did half the time was smile and nod. Much like his other companions did, come to that. Was he really so unintelligible? Hmmm.

She responded to his gratitude with a smile and a nudge and thought, _I told you that you were welcome to come here any time. I meant it_. Well, really what she thought at him was a grainy playback image of an old memory of her telling him that the first time, but he was unconsciously translating her communication into words. Easier that way.

_I'm making bread tomorrow morning, if you want to help. I go to town once a week to trade it for other things I need_. _It's become quite popular with the locals over the years._

"Certainly," he answered. "I'm quite good in the kitchen, I think you'll find." He winked at her and she leaned against his arm with a smile. He couldn't help but keep up his exuberant exterior—it was habit at this point, and she could see right through the façade anyway, making the effort almost pointless. It had gotten a smile out of her, though, so, you know. Worth it.

_As I recall, you almost set me on fire last time you tried to cook something_.

"Hey now, in my defense, that was a flambé, so it was supposed to be on fire." She chuffed a silent laugh again and squeezed his hand.

_It's damned good to see you again, Doctor_.

"Language, Haelin," he chided softly, kissing the top of her head. He had to agree with the sentiment, though, her cursing notwithstanding.

They stayed outside until the sun began to rise, then she went back in to get to work on the day's baking. The Doctor tried to remember all he ever knew about making bread, but most of his knowledge had to do with alien ingredients not applicable to this situation and how to make pitas in zero gravity, so he just stood back and watched her work instead. It took all of fifteen minutes before she gave an exasperated sigh and took his hand, dragging him up to the counter.

_I can't concentrate with you staring at me. Here, take this and knead it until it gets stretchy_.

And just like that, she incorporated him into her life. He rummaged around her kitchen for utensils as though he'd always been there, whirling her around until she was breathless and giddy. Bright yellow-orange sunlight streamed through the windows and shone on the fine flour that hung weightless in the air and for a few happy hours, he nearly forgot about the events that had led him here in the first place.

At the end of the day, while they waited for the last of the loaves to finish cooling, she sat next to him and had him recount the highlights of all the things he'd done since the last time he'd come by. Which was a lot, by his reckoning, so he glossed over some of it but she got the general gist and was properly impressed, making all the right noises in all the right spots. In the silence of her kitchen, as the light left the world, there was something secret and safe about this little pocket of sanity in an otherwise mad universe. The Doctor began to entertain notions of maybe . . . _maybe_ . . . stopping. Just putting on the brakes and allowing himself to live in one place for once.

Haelin had evidently caught wind of his musings and looked up at him with her wide green eyes. "_You can stay as long as you want. You gave me a home when I didn't have one—it's only right that I return the favor._"

"I wouldn't want to impose," he said, his voice low and quiet. "Besides, I'm so used to being on the move that I'd go mad within the month."

"_So does that mean I get a whole month with you?" _she wondered, and accompanied it with a short montage of the two of them just hanging out doing mundane things while he got progressively more and more bored. He had to chuckle at that and smoothed her hair back from her forehead affectionately.

"We'll see."

"_Haven't you had enough of running yet?_"

He looked out the window at the vista just outside, and the shadow of the TARDIS that lay across the grass. "You don't get to decide when you're done running," he said softly, but what he meant was _when you're done being sorry_. Haelin turned his face to hers and laid her forehead against his.

"_I never blamed you, you know. Not for a moment._" He slid his arm around her waist, took a deep breath, and let her into his memories deeper than before. He showed her the last few years—Rose and Mickey, Martha Jones, Sarah Jane and K9, Donna, Amy, Rory, Clara and River. Then he showed her all the ways he'd failed them. She pulled him into a hug while his chest hitched and shook against her.

"I don't know how to stop," he whispered. As she rubbed soothing circles on his back, she said the three most beautiful words in any language:

"_I forgive you_." It was suddenly all too much and he very nearly broke down. His mind kept supplying her with unbidden memories of his most recent incarnations until he came to the events on Trenzalore and he had to cling to her tightly as he relived it all in horrible detail—his footprints in time, and the Great Intelligence obliterating all of them. Clara, and her bravery as she sacrificed herself to save a billion people on a million planets, countless timelines saved by the impossible girl. River, his River, and the last time he kissed her before she faded away.

He sank out of the chair to his knees and wrapped his arms around Haelin's waist, his head in her lap, clutching at her in desperation as though he would fly apart if he didn't hold on to her. She stroked his hair as he broke down and sobbed out his grief, sent him as much comfort as she could even as the tears spilled over and fell onto the top of his head.

She'd never seen him completely lose it before, and it was an awful thing. If she could have saved him from it, she would have done so in an instant. He was a good man, one of the last true heroes, and he didn't deserve to live with such pain. His problem was, as it had always been, that he felt things so much more intensely than most people. When he was angry, he raged. When he was sad, he mourned. And when he made a friend, he fell in love. For someone like him, that led to heartache every single time.

When his sobs had tapered off and his breathing deepened, she helped him to his feet and took him back to his bedroom. She pulled aside the covers and waited while he got into bed, then sat beside him and took his hand into her lap, massaging his palm lightly.

"Don't go," he said, touching her face. Her eyes went wide with surprise and she shook her head 'no', of course she wouldn't leave. He sighed, closed his eyes, and was asleep in minutes.

She was left with a decision—go to her own room, or follow his orders and stay? She knew what she wanted to do, but it would mean stepping over a boundary they hadn't crossed before. He probably wouldn't see it that way, but among her own people, sleeping while touching and sharing dreams was about as intimate as it got. But what were the chances he remembered that after all this time?

Haelin slid beneath the covers beside him and studied his face as he slept. It was a new face, and an unconventional one, but underneath the younger features and shaggy hair was her Doctor, the man who had saved her all those long years ago. She had no idea how to go about helping him except to just be there for him if and when he needed her, and give him safe harbor for as long as he needed it. She only hoped he'd stay this time, at least for a while. It had been so long, and she wasn't ready to let him go yet.

It was nearly midnight before she fell asleep, and dreamed of those years spent in the TARDIS with him. He was running, always just out of reach, and she was laughing even as she tried desperately to keep up.


End file.
